This is an attempt at bringing together a selection of the stories and paintings of the Warlis, and some of the writings about `them'. To the Warlis, a community of Adivasis (indigenous peoples), who live close to Bombay, these stories represent their `history', their world-view. All the outsiders, the Portuguese, the Marathas, the British, the `native' settlers... they all tried obliterating this history and wisdom. The work of the outsiders who wrote about `the Warli' represents this process of creating new mythologies. By bringing together these disparate discourses, this video aspires to critique these mythologies... To read between the lines, as the stories themselves do.
Special Mention of the Jury, Mumbai International Film Festival, 1996

Set in the Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, it highlights non-tribal intrusions into the tribal habitat resulting in large-scale alienation of tribal land, deforestation and ecological degradation. Against this backdrop, the programme evaluates the existing initiatives for development, both governmental and voluntary.

The first part looks at colonial history to examine the process by which many disparate tribes were labelled as `criminal'. The second part establishes, through case studies, that even after independence the status of these tribes has not substantially changed.

A video document of a theatre workshop, organised by Rural Campus and Unit for Media and Communications, TISS for a range of stakeholders involved in rural development work. The facilitative role of theatre in making people responsive and critically conscious and the potential of the medium in transforming them from spectators to spectActors is depicted in this video.

Questioning the notion of the self as a pre-given, primordial and purposive entity, this video explores the gamut of modes in which identities are produced, circulated and consumed within our culture. Identity is both difference and relationship; identity is enmeshed in relations of power, be they of gender, race or religion. Traversing a multi-cultural terrain inhabited by Paul Klee and the Indo-Anglian poet A.K. Ramanujan, by popular commercials and the writings of riot-affected children, Michel Foucault and Sant Kabir, the medieval Sufi poet, the video is an invitation to examine anew our praxis of identity as an eternally negotiated site of change and resistance.
Prix Futura Berlin 1995, Asia; 2nd prize, Education and Literacy category, International Video Festival, Thiruvananthapuram, 1995

This series of short videos is dedicated to the critical spirit in all of us. Whether it is a questioning of the notion of an objective reality (in ‘Dialogue') and an instrumental language (in `Table, table and ...) or an appreciation of how the media reproduce dominant relations of power in our culture, the attempt is to facilitate a rethinking of our relationship to the world around us. `Ideological Baggage' explores the construction of gender in a television commercial while `Packaged Desire' examines the modus operandi of advertising. `The Phantom Country', `The Myth of Columbus' and `A Taste of Fascism' deal with various aspects of racism in the media.
First Prize and the Award for Individual Technical Excellence in Editing, Sixth UGC Country-wide Classroom Video Festival 1993, Calcutta